NOTE: we have a few typos in this video that some of you noticed. Was editing late at night rushing to get it out for the next day. We will try to do better in the next one. Thanks for all the support. Ben.
In many legends dragons have various elements like for example poison, stone skin, etc. And there were also Sea Serpents, Wyverns and Drakes and Worms who travel underground (Salamanders sometimes also were included). The stereotypical fire breathing dragon is usually refereed as Cesar Dragon and was believed to be strongest of its kind. Possibly having aspects of all elements. Gold hording trait was actually associated with Fafnir, who actually was a dwarf (earth elemental). What mean that dragons weren't actually as much singular specie as form taken by gods. Usually when they were angry on humans. In this context thunder god fighting evil dragon to save virgin goddess. May also be a dragon himself. Speaking of that Hydra and Cerberus were Zeus nieces. Anyway, if we look closely Europeans and Asian dragons are actually not that different. Slavic Zmei tend to be quite similar in depiction to Chinese dragons, though typically associated with thunder. Though it is umbrela term. Most famous version was multi-headed shape sifter from Russian folklore. Here it is worth to mention that in common interpretation Four Symbols are all dragons. So Phoenixes (also know on West), Serpents, Feline-like (also known in Nordic felklore) and Quilins (fifth one is some interpretations) may share nature. Quite characteristic detail is that Chinese Dragons and Foxes have ball object, known as Star Ball. Quite interestingly same detail appear in legends involving medieval Unicorns (or properly Nicors/Neck/Nixies what absolutely should not be confused with Hollywood nonsense, as they aren't horses). What BTW also were shape sifters water spirits, associated with noble people and known from having magic stone known as Carbuncle. Those similarities aren't that different if we remember about Silk Road. China and Rome could know about each other. Association with evil mostly come from fact that word "Dragon" is one of translations of "Serpent" in bible. It is why they become associated with the Satan. Though technically is we look closely, angels regularly tend to be depicted as terrifying beasts, who approach people disguised as humans. Conclusion I assume is obvious. Also fun fact, there is analogy to For Symbols in Judaism. Hayyot Ha Kodesh (aka Living Beasts or as called by Christians, Cherubim) are powerful and quite wild elemental angels. In number of four. Though depiction slightly differ they are quite similar. Especially as even sources disagree about elements associated with them (and those could be mixed), who also are lead by Grifin-like creature with peacock tail, also refereed as "the Lamb" but known as Raziel Helel (Buraq in Islam). There is some level of cultural migration there.
@@minoru_west Yes. Those names are used as analogies. Not literally. But generally lot of those have analogies in other cultures, for example: Slavic Raróg, Egyptian Bennu, or Persian Huma. It probably is related to Silk Road.
I've always understood Huli Jing to be the Chinese name for a nine tailed fox. Is that a dual myth like phoenix and vermilion bird or just a different name for a different region/language in China?
Tonals , since chinese is a tonal language （ i come from a mixed Thai/Chinese fam. Myself） id also not say ‘as an asian’ bcs not all our languages are tonal languages. Only Chinese , Thai , lao , Viet. & burmese are Tonal languages. Any other one from around East and Southeast asia is at least somewhat easier bcs they dont have tonal languages. The rest of asia i dont include as that would be again much bigger differences especially for West asia （which is the middle-eastern part of asia）…. Coming to ‘ppl pronouncing especially words from Tonal languages , ive seen a few others （mainly white youtubers , living in thailand and china） who were even better in speaking the language than some ppl who actually have thai/chinese roots… for some ppl learning any languages around the world dont seem to hard to learn （ if we talk about SPEAKING the language only ）
With the recent Black Wukong craze I was hoping you'd make a video about him or journey to the west or Sun Wukong or related myths hopefully you do I like this video too
My grandmother was born in the year of the dragon and when she passed away it started raining soon after doctors declared. I never realized why my dad said "the dragon has ascended to heaven" but after hearing this piece of knowledge, it kind of gives me peace. Thanks for sharing!!
Gonna sound weird but exactly the same thing happened to my dad, I was on my way home from school and it started pouring down with rain for 5 mins I found out in that time period my dad passed. He was also yeas of the dragon
Technically, "fenghuang" is not a single entity: "feng" is the male and "huang" is the female of the species. Perhaps that was why the movie showed a pair of flaming flying birds? Over time, it seems the word has been feminised to be paired with the masculine dragon... My favourite is the "qilin" because the character "lin" is in my name. My mother supposedly dreamt of the creature before I was born, but unfortunately, I am definitely no sage or person of great virtue and wisdom! Just living life day to day as a nobody.
A proverb once said "Better a son who know how to farm (doing his job) than a king/general who knows only to drink/dine (extravagans)" Now, whic one is you? 😉😉😉😉😉
The thing is, many people claim the Nine-Tailed Fox as Korean or Japanese, but factually and historically created in China Mythology. Note that Japanese and Korean culture all have roots derived from Chinese culture and myths. For example Koreans took the Chinese Zodiac Calendar and Lunar New Year and made it their "own". The Hanfu was also created by the Chinese, but stolen by the Koreans for their culture. They tried to name it hanbok to divert plagiarism from it.
Many ppl do not realized plagiarism is at the core of Korean values. It not a coincident that Samsung was sued by Apple over the smartphone designs and Apple won. They stole Jpop style and culture too. I think it’s sickening how plastic the society have become that they actually promote cosmetic tourism. I cannot imagine being a Korean. The pressure of society to look good that I go into a plastic surgery shop to ‘plagiarise’ another celebrity look. Very rotten society and kpoop just made it worst
I watch a lot of Chinese fantasy dramas (Xianxia) so I am already familiar with these mythical creatures. I like your explaining their true meaning. It helps me understand them better.
I was gonna say that, it helps me understand my daughters anime too. For all its entertainment, it sometimes doesn’t make sense to a western animation girl like me. ✌️
So…I read XianXia as in fresh prawns. And when I read C-dramas I heard Sea Dramas. If dragons are the controllers of weathers, does that mean the descendants of the dragons, including me can make people wet too?
nah no way dude.Those Xianxia sucks so much.Almost no Chinese like to watch those, they just mislead people how mythical creatures are and those studio who make the film only care about money.Those stories are all the same and so bad, the stories are like those weird story book like 17 years ago in China.💀
Dear Ben, It's a real joy to see you back in the videos treating our culture with sincere respect. It really does mean the world to me. The fact is that anyone else would have delivered this material with a tone of superiority, disbelief, and derision. But you took pains to make sure that where jokes were included they weren't at our expense. The effort hasn't gone unnoticed. You're one of the free people I trust to present Chinese cultural Artifacts in a faithful and respectful way. Thank you so much.
no he’s right, and i say this as a white person so maybe try to look beyond your own views (as someone who based on your response i assume is a white male) and notice how incredibly biased most westerners are when covering chinese topics, it’s really disappointing
@@uuuuuuuuiiiiiii was it the name? Not mine. And I studied Chinese and culture and am very aware of all the bullies and unfairness in the world. But when you distrust EVERYBODY and think every - or even most- white people are racist you end up seeing what you expect to see. And that helps no one , least of all you. And can make you hostile and off putting to people on your side. Which helps the indoctrination// racists but does no good. I’ve found being aware and wary but still expecting people to behave well and trying to behave well myself is a more useful approach. Some times peoples heads are full of preconceptions through lack of experience, knowledge and understanding
The earliest known dragon in China is actually from the Hong Shan Culture, back in Neolithic age, about 6 to 7 thousands years ago. During the excavations, archeologist discovered a dragon carved using black jade. Earliest known "phoenix" or sun bird was discovered in Shen Yang, Liao Ning Province, also from neolithic period about 8 thousand years ago. The sun birds were carved wooden totems, they were in a bundle of three; the city uses the sun bird as her emblem even today.
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon” Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" . “The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community. the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.” Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"? During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles". Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 I agree, but its the western translation to things that are closest known to them so they have a better time understanding or grasping what these mythical animals are. If you attempt to enlighten someone by using ping yin, no body would understand. Think about it, ask someone what a fenghuang is, or what JiuWeiHU is, no body would understand you, but if you tell them that its the chinese pheonix or nine tail all of a sudden the realize. If you want foreign countries to realize and understand your culture better, its ok to use or compare with counterparts.
The Fenghuang (Phoenix) is not wreathed in fire, this is a common mixup with the European myth or the Chinese Zhuque (Vermillion Bird of the South). The Shanhaijing is one of the oldest known compendium, but draws from much older legends and accounts... human-headed snakes are probably among the most normal stuff in there :D
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 As a descendant of the Chinese culture, i approved all of the translations in the video, they are accurate translations that nicely depict the characteristics of the mythical animals. Dragons, phoenix, nine tailed fox are nice names in no way for anyone from any culture to be confused, way better then forcing meaningless Mandarin pronunciation on people of other cultures.
@@sryis meaningless pronunciation? So do you mean that sushi, kimchi, kimono, katana, Beijing, Tianjin, Tokyo are meaningless also? Of course, they're meaningless because people from other countries don't understand those vocabularies, do they?
@@yanyanz3011people from other cultures are probably not likely to want to learn word pronunciation from another language in order to properly pronounce the name of a creature that is similar to one in their own culture. They’re much more likely to say “Chinese dragon”.
About the Feng Huang, they are actually a pair with Feng being the male and Huang being the female. Similarly, Qi Lin is a pair with Qi being the male and Lin being the female. Over time people just got lazy and only drew one creature instead of a pair. Also in ancient time, these creatures were reserved by royalties. Dragon for Emperor, Pheonix for Empress/Queen. Anyone else who used these creatures as symbols would have their heads off. There is another creature similar to Qi Lin called Long Ma "Dragon Horse". Think of it as the ancient Chinese Pegasus as it was supposed to be a winged horse with a dragon's head. And as a side note, your slide about the Feng Huang being king of birds "百鳥之王" had the wrong character. Your slide used 白 (the colour white) in stead of 百 (the unit 100) so it actually reads as "king of white birds".
Not quite with the dragon, that had to do with the number of toes the dragons portrayed had which had differences that ended up focusing in different areas.
I thought Long Ma was a specific character, the dragon that turned into a white horse who accompanies the heroes in Journey to the West. Is there more than one Long Ma?
@@malindakao7978 That is Bai Long Ma ("White Dragon Horse"). He was a specific fictional character in Journey to the West. He was literally a teen dragon who was transformed into a white horse. But the mythical Long Ma was its own kind of creature.
My favorite part of Shangchi was the depictions of creatures from traditional chinese folklore. I wish we could have seen more of that, or like a spinoff that takes place primarily in that world.
So when will we return to the state of being a vassal state of China?☺️I like the time when China was the master of Asia and controlled the world trade.😎
@@cottonbomb8272unlike European languages which are mostly in the same language group (Indo-European), these three languages belong to different language groups. Some say Japanese belongs to Altaic too but actually it only shares some wording patterns and not the grammar. What we share is that we were all under the great influence of China and imported academic methods, some vocabularies and writing letters etc from them. China was a big brother or let's say, a mother in terms of civilizing process for most of the Asian countries around.
thats why I used word "communicating". And about European languages, theres similar group divisions, like Germanic group(German/North4/English), Romance(French/Spanish/Italian etc), Slavic(EastEuro). Both Germanic and Slavic adopted so many Romance words too cuz the obvious Roman empire influnce, just like the ancient China. Now by the internet power we keep adopting words, Chinese use Byebye more than 再见 especially in eastern coast cities. And many morden tech words we are using are acutally comes from Japan
Qilin was featured prominently in opening sequence of the most recent Fantastic Beasts movie (harry potter series). Eddie Redmayne pronounced Qilin expertly! I was thoroughly impressed
Man no body introduces Shan Hai Jing and those Chinese mythical creatures enough. I LOVE chinese mythical creatures! Nice to see your video! And yes I do believe in them :D
Loved the Shang Chi film including these mythical creatures, I hope we see more in future media. I would love to visit China one day to see the Great Wall and Forbidden City
Born and raised in China, I appreciate so much of this video!!! I didn’t expect to learn so much about these creatures through this video, but I did!!! Well done!! Thank you so much for sharing ❤❤❤
Gosh can i just say how happy i am to hear you pronouncing everything so properly and accurately, thank you for respecting my culture enough to say it properly
The Qilin story of appearing to benevolent ruler was also the core story of the most recent "Fantastic beasts" movie. There is a Qilin in the story and it was "captured" to help the wizard world choose their new leader. The baddy of the film created a bad Qilin so that it will appear as the Qilin chose him, but the good guys came and used a real Qilin and it chose a better person.
“Dragons” were all the same to the ancients. East or West, dragons were associated with water; you can see that idea still persisting in sailors’ maps showing the boundaries of the seas filled with dragons. Where the waters and winds were seen as calm, the dragons were benevolent. Where the waters and winds were harsh, they were seen as harsh. The fire breathing worms of the west were slowly developed over time, beginning with ancient stories about fighting dragons (the ocean torrents), and continuing with Saint George, The Hobbit, etc.
Chinese Dragon: rulers of sea / water creatures. Chinese Phoenix: ruler of the sky/birds Kirin/Qilin: ruler of the land animals. Edit: don't check the comments, it is a waste of your time .
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 Yes. Those are analogies/translations. And they do have identical counterparts. It is just not clear as many common depictions were washed out by mass media. Regard Feng Huang I agree. It is more just fancy bird. Suzaku is actually closer to Phoenix/Raróg. In European mythologies there is dozen types of Dragons including Sea Serpens and Zmey. Nicors arguably are closes to fox spirits then Qilin. But there is also something known as Hippocampus. I'm not entirely sure what point you are making? You are aware of Silk Road?
@@TheRezro it's not identical, but similar. You can say that marsupial dog is similar to common dog, but they are not identical, they are just similar, it's called convergent evolution. Same here in the mythological creatures. And one more, do not use japanese word for referring to Chinese stuff, it's called Zhuque, not Suzaku. Of course I know that Suzaku is the japanese pronunciation for Zhuque these Hanzi, but this thing is originated from China, you have to use Chinese pronunciation. I wonder why you people are happily to use Japanese or Korean pronunciation to mention their proper nouns, meanwhile you use English or other languages pronunciation to mention Chinese stuffs.
@@yanyanz3011 the nine tailed fox is just translation of jiuweihu. Other than that, you are correct. By dragon: we often refer to Chinese/eastern dragons.
The nine-tailed fox in Japanese is known as a Kitsune. Chinese mythology also has the Longma which is often depicted as a draconic unicorn with wings, sort of like a dragon pegasus if you will but with bat-like wings.
came from somewhere else as most japanese cultures are. it gets heavily influenced from every other culture. you can even see it in their current society. The Japanese is good at take from somewhere, focus on it and enhance it.
sadly i want said to you that japanese called kitsune are inspired or taken from china mythology just like goku or kiki father are inspired from china journey to the west sun wukong & niu mo wang
This was so cool to hear about all the history too going into it! Really excellent video. It's great to see Ben again too, I remember him from way back in Off the Great Wall days haha
Thanks for this video! I'm so glad you didn't leave out the pronunciations. 😂 Some of my favorite Chinese coins have dragons or dragons and phoenixes on them. Qi lins are great, too (that also appears in the collection). I found a really good book on dragons titled Dragon in China and Japan, by Visser (pub. 1954). He throws in a bit about India a well. Lots of interesting lore in that little book.
The creator of Japanese mythology is ancient Chinese. They miss China very much. But they cannot return to China. Therefore, they use a large number of Chinese literature and book borrowings brought by China.. Adapted and created (Only these Chinese elites can understand the content).Become a new myth (modern is called Japanese myth). The characters and stories in their myths are from ancient China (including styling and clothing).
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon” Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" . “The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community. the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.” Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"? During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles". Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
To add to your Daji bit, the king wasn't corrupted by Daji. He was always an evil douche-canoe, so much that Nuwa, a goddess, tasked Daji with bringing down the entire dynasty. Daji didn't just wake up one morning and think, "You know, I think I'm going to be the king's concubine and feed him human flesh. That'd be fun." Daji went about the whole "revoking the mandate of heaven" thing by driving the king into greater and greater corruption until his own people rebelled. Nuwa was eventually so disgusted with Daji's actions that she raised up a shaman to kill Daji. But the whole thing started because Nuwa ordered it anyway. There are no heroes in that story.
Brother, as a Chinese, I want to correct this. The relationship between Daji and Nuwa comes from the Romance of the Gods and does not exist in orthodox mythology.
Nüwa was also the goddess who created human species supposedly by using mud/clay(so, the ancient day clay artist). And yah the Nüwa and Daji relationship is a new thing, the old stories doesn't have such a link because the fox Daji is not a goddess but instead a spirit kind called 妖精Yao Jing, Yao Jing are things(plants/trees/animals or sometimes even nonliving items) that by rare chance grew to have human-like but also beyond human intelligent, they can grow to have a human feature while keeping their original form after years of self training and only lives on Earth, basically immortal that only dies if being killed by god/goddess/other Yao Jing. They too like humans can become a god/goddess over long time if they're good and hardworking with merits but Daji was not that. A god/goddess and Yao Jing would never become friends because they belong to a different world, god/goddess lives in a different world on the sky with different time flow and stuffs, they don't come down often apart from missions. Also apparently Daji is an actual human who did became a concubine of 商纣王, but according to some history records she's a kind hearted human and had not much to do with the downfall of the dynasty(it's been going downhill for a while anyways), her being a cunning fox seducing people and ending the whole Shang dynasty was a thing that's made up by dynasties after Shang because women hating is a thing and 红颜祸水(basically saying pretty women ruins everything) is a very much popular phrase.
Daji is a real person.She's not a God.Why is she a fox with nine tails?Because she's from the Yusu tribe.The totem of the Yousu tribe is the nine-tailed fox.At the same time, Daji is also the sister of my ancestors.My ancestors were the last of the Yusu tribe.My ancestor was the last patriarch of the Yousu tribe, who founded the State of Su.Later, his descendants and clansmen were all surnamed Su.Su has a population of more than eight million worldwide.
If a lot of you recognize them from animes or kdrama, this is where it all came from. Japanese and koreans are not great at citing sources when it comes to their cultural exports.😅
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon” Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" . “The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community. the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.” Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"? During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, Baihu (White Tiger), Zhuque (Suzaku), Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles". Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Oh yeah, they just culturally plagiarized and then misbranded everything as “Japanese” or “Korean”. Worse, they come around looking down on Chinese culture and trash Chinese culture while elevating their misbranded “Japanese” and “Korean” cultures. Koreans even claim that Confucius was “Korean”, and that Koreans invented the Oracle Bones Script. Just utterly ridiculous with their way to usurp supremacy over China from where their cultures came from. Reminds me of fallen angels blaspheming God while pretending they are gods, usurping the place of God.
@@barbiebarbie1813 Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@barbiebarbie1813 and please DO NOT USE JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION FOR THE CHINESE THINGS, it's just called Qinglong, Baihu, Zhuque, Xuanwu. Remember that my friend.
If you say what you say, foreigners do n’t understand. Others do n’t understand. It ’s meaningless. The Japanese and Koreans use foreigners to do not understand Chinese characters to fabricate history and culture.@@yanyanz3011
I really enjoying your video! Your pronunciation are amazingly accurate. I like the way your explaining their true meaning. It helps me understand them better.
U guys i know for sure that dragons exist. There is a big heart shape pond in myanmar which my tribe also had a history about that pond.. Army camp nearby used to spot a snake like creature which had like a sort of horn.. therefore in our language we call it "A snake that have horn". they use to shoot the cresture when they spot it, out of fear of course.. but any person that.shot the creature suffer from an unknown disease like high fever etc etc... i do believe that that creature is the last kind of dragon.
In addition, Fenghuang(phoenix) is actually a pair of birds. Feng is the male one and Huang is the female one. And we have this classical theme song call Feng Qiu Huang, Qiu means persuing here.
You got a like from me because you mentioned my favorite Pokémon ! Actually a lot of Pokémon are based on Chinese myths not just Ninetales. Ho Oh is based the Chinese Phoenix. Infernape is based on Sun Wu Kong the Monkey King.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 九尾狐 literally means "nine+ tail + fox" what are you talking about? And do you have any idea how many cultures have a distinct mythical creature with only vaguely similar characteristics to others, that we as a society have all _collectively_ classified as 'dragons'? It's not that no one wants to learn, but you start with a familiar base. You start going into detail once people can actually understand what you're referring to. Especially when we're talking about, you know, fictional creatures we can only describe from historical anecdotes and artist depictions?
one thing i learned a long time ago when i started getting into folk lore and Myths and legends, is that all these story's had a factual beginning that simply became more fantastic in the telling of their stories.
This video popped up as a suggestion from TH-cam. I loved watching it! I find mythological creatures really fascinating, and I love the sound of Chinese words such as the names of these creatures. I’m curious about the movie. By the way, our cat is named Kurama after the nine-tailed fox as it appears in some Japanese anime. The story of foxes appearing as beautiful women to lure men to their deaths is prevalent in Japan, too.
Disclaimer: I am not a historian nor am I Chinese (I am half Japanese half Korean). The following comment is my personal opinion and idea. If you are Chinese and you are knowledgeable about Chinese myth, please correct any mistakes I make. One thing I personally find really interesting is how you can compare the Fènghuáng and Lóng with the Yīn and Yáng symbol. Both the Fènghuáng and Yīn are correlated with femininity, while the Lóng and Yáng are attributed to masculinity. However what I also find interesting is how Yīn and Yáng are also associated with the moon and sun respectively. The Fènghuáng, as stated in the video, is a mythical bird that came from / uses the power of the sun. But according to the Yīn and Yáng, the sun is considered a masculine symbol. This could potentially be explained by the fact that Fènghuáng used to be both male and female, with the males being called the “Fèng” and females being called the “Huáng”. However once the bird became paired with the dragon as it’s opposite entity, “Fèng” and “Huáng” were combined in order to become a single female entity, the Fènghuáng. If you look back to the various meanings of Yīn and Yáng, you’ll notice that both symbols represent the sexual reproductive aspects of female and male. While that concept in and of itself makes sense, what I find interesting is that Yīn symbolizes *both* reproductive parts while Yáng is solely masculine. This could be a potential point of interest that can connect Yīn’s correlation with the Fènghuáng. The one thing that stumps me is the celestial body symbolism. Normally, the Fènghuáng represents fire, whilst the Lóng represents water (notice how the Lóng is inspired by aquatic / semi-aquatic animals). And yet, the moon, which is associated with water in many cultures given it’s predominant effect in the ocean’s tides, and the sun which is, well, the sun, fire… I think for this aspect, I think it’s more so the figurative interpretation rather than literal. The sun represents energy. Power. The Chinese dragon is always associated with the emperor of China. Absolute power. The moon is smaller than the sun and it’s light much more gentle. The moon represents femininity. You can say that the Fènghuáng is gentle like water and the Lóng is fierce like fire, which juxtaposes the elemental power that they are associated with having. The Chinese idea of “combining” aspects of “two opposites” is endlessly fascinating to me. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve been inspired to write a story regarding the themes. I am an aspiring writer and animator. I’m not a good writer and I’ve yet to learn how to draw well, but stories and art are my passions in life, and there are so many ideas I wish to bring to life. My idea inspired by Chinese myth revolves around a Phoenix and a Dragon, disguised as humans in modern 21st century China. As immortals, they have witnessed the birth of China as a nation and are keenly aware of every single aspect of the country’s history. They’ve also learned to adapt to modern life and technology and integrate into the modern culture. It’s the kind of story that introduces very historic and archaic ideas, remixed to fit and adapt into a modern setting. My current idea for the character designs is to have the Fènghuáng be pretty tough and cool-looking in the outside but has a gentle and caring personality. She’ll have a mature appearance but her eyes with white pupils emanate a very soft, almost child-like look that sees the world like a soft-flowing river. The dragon character however has the outward appearance of a child, but stare too deeply into his black eyes and you’ll catch a glimpse of the ferocious and wild beast that’s been tamed inside of the body. I hope I can improve my knowledge and writing skills so that I’m able to tap into the rich and enchanting Chinese culture and mythology. It’s the kind of thing that I don’t want to make any mistakes when depicting, using artistic license in order to enhance already-existing ideas as apposed to deleting and replacing them. I firmly believe that people need to respect and learn from history without letting it strictly control our lives. Both the ideas of the past and ideas of the future matter. Yīn and Yáng, eh?~
Sometimes 阴yin refers to the genitalia, which is usually combined with another Chinese character "部" (部 is an abstract concept, usually described as a part of the whole, and in most cases has a clear subordinate relationship) to form the "阴部 ". My personal understanding is that Yang may also refer to the “surface”, while Yin refers to the “hidden”,yang is something we can clearly observe, while yin is often something we cannot easily see. Therefore,to a people,in daily life, places that cannot be openly displayed to everyone are called the "阴部hidden part", which is the genitalia. Of course, this is my personal understanding of modern Chinese, and I am not sure if it was the case in ancient times.
Supplementary notes: “yang is something we can clearly observe, while yin is often something we cannot easily see”It's for “the one thing”,It's like... It's like sunny! We often easily notice sunlight on a sunny day, so sunlight is Yang, but at the same time as sunlight comes, shadows appear with it, so shadows are Yin. For Two Related but Different things, if we select one as a benchmark firstly and say that one is Yang, then the other one can be called Yin.Such as In COVID-19 testing, the test results "infected with the virus" are referred to as yang, and "uninfected with the virus" are referred to as yin. These two are of the same level in terms of results, with only infected or uninfected, but they still have a distinction between yin and yang.
Any tips for your work, I have some personal thoughts. According to the Yin Yang fish, While Yin and Yang do not invade each other, there is Yin in Yang and Yang in Yin,so “Yin and Yang” is a balanced idea.Perhaps this can provide some ideas for the interaction between the two protagonists,like someone's contrast,or they sometimes imitating the other one's style of behavior,etc. The story may not be very novel for Chinese people, but I believe that this genre may not have been widely disseminated internationally yet. At least with your excellent personal knowledge, you can still give it a try. Many manga or novel works that are famous for some culture often have authors who only know the surface of the culture they are based on, and the culture as the theme is just a gimmick, but you are obviously different. You know its core,you know how it works.In fact, your understanding of this part of Chinese culture far exceeds that of many non Chinese people(even some Chinese people). Believe in yourself, I wish you success soon.🥰🥰🥰Good luck.
@@Hacksilber I suppose the base idea doesn’t sound very novel since the details are pretty barebones. I haven’t thought of much else besides the shape of the skeleton of the idea, so it’s up to me to flesh it out to make it more interesting. Thank you, thank you very much for your words. I’m still learning more about Chinese culture and myth every day, discovering ideas and recontextualizing things I already knew to gain a deeper understanding. I believe China’s history to be a very rich and powerful aspect of humanity. I’d also like to thank you for your added input of knowledge. I appreciate it and I will make sure to keep your comments saved for future reference!
The recent video game Palia borrows a lot of Chinese mythology to create their own... dragon and Phoenix have their own shrines and aesthetic, and the nine-tailed fox was adapted to an adorable creature called a kitsuu with antlers and 2 tails.
I watch a lot of chinese movies/shows and i love the look of chinese dragons. Other countries version of a dragaon cant hold a candles to chinese dragons.
Awesome! I'm currently writing about relations between Ancient and Medieval Somalia and China, and this video will certainly help as a guiding reference! Great job!
New to the channel. Currently learning Mandarin (partially studying Cantonese) and Japanese! Remember the "Shang Chi" movie, 😮😮😮😮😮! Saw the the mythical beasts, had no knowlede about them...until I saw segment! Xie xie!
I love Mythology and especially Journey to the West and Wukong stuffs. I like the martial art stuff in Shang Chi, but my favorite is all the lore and mythological world building, it feels grand and magical as Thor on Asgard.
I love reading wuxia novels, and I read about these mythical creatures all the time. It's nice to see a proper visualisation rather than what I just imagined they looked like
Kirin appears in the Monster Hunter series as an elder dragon that resembles a unicorn that can summon lightning along with some of the other creatures.
A lot of Japanese mythology borrows from Chinese mythology. You'll see a lot of similarities between them. Japanese mythology and ancient literature. Many of them are re -content of ancient Chinese literature books. It was created and re -prepared by ancient Chinese people who moved to Japan 東瀛 / 倭 in ancient times. They were written with a lot of reference to ancient Chinese books and historical content. And all of them were written by ancient Chinese文言文 (pronounced in Chinese dialect). So the content of Japanese mythology is similar to Chinese classics and mythology. Including gods and monsters. For more than 2,000 years, some ancient Chinese nobles escape to Japan 東瀛 / 倭 because of the war. After that, a large number of Chinese elites were sent to Japan by the Emperor of the Chinese Tang Dynasty. These Chinese in Japan東瀛 / 倭. They are elites responsible for establishing the Chinese regime. * At that time. Ancient Japanese region was one of the ancient Chinese cities (especially before the 13th century). It was called "東瀛 / 倭". In addition to the "Chinese regime area" established by the Chinese. At that time, there were more than 100 other indigenous countries on the island (the ancestors of the Japanese today). *Modern Japanese have about 5-10%of ancient Chinese blood. To understand the origin of Korea and Vietnam’s fake history, we must start with the Japanese creating fake history after World War II to promote global success models (now Korea and Vietnam also use the belief technique).
You'd be amazed how much of myth is actually real. Most of myth is just being used to keep the true historical truth in the occult, but there have been many archeological excavations as well as finds that have been DNA tested. Sometimes what appears to be rock might be a part of a heart, lung or other tissue that was fossilized. A process that takes a lot shorter then is preclaimed, because there have been modern materials fossilized as well like car engines for example.
Always wondered if these are mythical, how did the first humans came up with it? Wouldn’t the other people around them call them out for being liars? I think there is a bigger probability that these creatures existed at some point in time, then faded from views. Over time, they became myths and legends.
Hi Ben, thank you for sharing this insightful video. As a believer of other faith, I became quite confused when suddenly I began to draw spontaneous detailed drawings of different gods & goddesses or deities, mystical and celestial beings with scriptures. Since then, this has became a big WHY and I I have been searching for info which could help me to understand what they are, their origin and why are they appearing in my artworks. Some of the creatures you mentioned has been appearing in my artworks such as dragons, phoenix, zhilin & the lion. I hope to be able to find more info which could help me to have a deeper understanding or at least relate to the hidden meanings in the artworks.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
Ummm loved it, as a Chinese I didn’t even know about all these, ummm one small mistake at the Phoenix part, it’s 百鸟之王 not 白鸟之王。 百is hundred， 白 is white。 😊
The Chinese nine-tailed fox 九尾狐- Original version Japanese Kitsune ?? - The so -called "Japanese mythology". It is the content adapted from the Chinese in ancient Japan (the Chinese palace has been occupied by the Japanese indigenous people. The local Chinese cannot return to mainland China). The local Chinese referred to a large number of Chinese mythology books. Only the ancient Chinese talents who have received higher education understand the ancient classical Chinese. Korean Gumiho ?? - No Korean myth in real history. Modern Koreans directly copied Chinese myths. The fake Korean history and fake culture they have been creating.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
You can use japanese and Korean pronunciation for that thing, but you use English for Chinese creatures? What a ridiculous joke? Why can't you just write Jiuweihu?
@@yanyanz3011 English is for everyone to understand. "Chinese characters sound 大陸漢字併音" can only be understood by mainland Chinese people. So why don't you use Chinese characters directly?
@@barbiebarbie1813 yeah of course, the Japanese and Korean pronunciation can only be understood by Japanese and korean, so don't use the term sushi, kimchi, karate, ginseng, tsunami, use Japanese and Korean character instead. And one more, Chinese writing system is called Hanzi not Chinese character.
I really enjoyed this video! Would it be possible to look at the history of the monkey king tales? I’m off to watch the rest of your Chinese history videos!
Fascinating, I learned so much. I thought maybe some scary looking Dino bones were discovered in the area thousands of years ago and that was the inspiration for the legends of dragons. I would love to be relaxing down at the beach and just see them flying overhead. Benevolent ones of course.
The lion-like creature is also depicted as idols and carved in stones in the southern part of India. The are depicted outside temples and on pillars. We call it Yali.
I’ve lived in Asia almost 50 years and speak fluent Chinese. I honestly believe there were these creatures in the past-they really existed. However, the palate of the rich Chinese craves the exotic! So these wonderful creatures were eaten out of existence.
I don't think you can call the Qi Lin a Chinese unicorn. There is not an equivalent in Greek or other western cultures. It will be like saying the unicorn is the Greek Qi Lin. Doesn't make sense. Just call it Qi Lin.
Loong is not dragon, Fenghuang is not Phoenix, Qilin is not unicorn, And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox. Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology. So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
Its interesting that Nine tails foxes are more commonly associated with Japan. As they were transfered into Shinto beliefs as they are familiars of goddess inari. Same with many folk tales. When in reality originated in China.
Because japan have soft power while china lack it. China reputation is also bad because western media always portray chinese government as evil.(it may be true or maybe not, i dont know i'm not mainland chinese)
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
NOTE: we have a few typos in this video that some of you noticed. Was editing late at night rushing to get it out for the next day. We will try to do better in the next one. Thanks for all the support. Ben.
In many legends dragons have various elements like for example poison, stone skin, etc. And there were also Sea Serpents, Wyverns and Drakes and Worms who travel underground (Salamanders sometimes also were included). The stereotypical fire breathing dragon is usually refereed as Cesar Dragon and was believed to be strongest of its kind. Possibly having aspects of all elements. Gold hording trait was actually associated with Fafnir, who actually was a dwarf (earth elemental). What mean that dragons weren't actually as much singular specie as form taken by gods. Usually when they were angry on humans. In this context thunder god fighting evil dragon to save virgin goddess. May also be a dragon himself. Speaking of that Hydra and Cerberus were Zeus nieces.
Anyway, if we look closely Europeans and Asian dragons are actually not that different. Slavic Zmei tend to be quite similar in depiction to Chinese dragons, though typically associated with thunder. Though it is umbrela term. Most famous version was multi-headed shape sifter from Russian folklore. Here it is worth to mention that in common interpretation Four Symbols are all dragons. So Phoenixes (also know on West), Serpents, Feline-like (also known in Nordic felklore) and Quilins (fifth one is some interpretations) may share nature.
Quite characteristic detail is that Chinese Dragons and Foxes have ball object, known as Star Ball. Quite interestingly same detail appear in legends involving medieval Unicorns (or properly Nicors/Neck/Nixies what absolutely should not be confused with Hollywood nonsense, as they aren't horses). What BTW also were shape sifters water spirits, associated with noble people and known from having magic stone known as Carbuncle. Those similarities aren't that different if we remember about Silk Road. China and Rome could know about each other. Association with evil mostly come from fact that word "Dragon" is one of translations of "Serpent" in bible. It is why they become associated with the Satan.
Though technically is we look closely, angels regularly tend to be depicted as terrifying beasts, who approach people disguised as humans. Conclusion I assume is obvious. Also fun fact, there is analogy to For Symbols in Judaism. Hayyot Ha Kodesh (aka Living Beasts or as called by Christians, Cherubim) are powerful and quite wild elemental angels. In number of four. Though depiction slightly differ they are quite similar. Especially as even sources disagree about elements associated with them (and those could be mixed), who also are lead by Grifin-like creature with peacock tail, also refereed as "the Lamb" but known as Raziel Helel (Buraq in Islam). There is some level of cultural migration there.
I Hate You!
A phoenix is a myth from the Arabian History and not Chinese and it also called The Arabian Bird.
@@minoru_west Yes. Those names are used as analogies. Not literally. But generally lot of those have analogies in other cultures, for example: Slavic Raróg, Egyptian Bennu, or Persian Huma. It probably is related to Silk Road.
I've always understood Huli Jing to be the Chinese name for a nine tailed fox. Is that a dual myth like phoenix and vermilion bird or just a different name for a different region/language in China?
As an Asian, I feel highly respected by how this guy is pronouncing each word with a Chinese pronounciation 🙏
I mean, his channel name is Learn Chinese Now, so I assumed he knows Chinese language.
Tonals , since chinese is a tonal language （ i come from a mixed Thai/Chinese fam. Myself） id also not say ‘as an asian’ bcs not all our languages are tonal languages. Only Chinese , Thai , lao , Viet. & burmese are Tonal languages. Any other one from around East and Southeast asia is at least somewhat easier bcs they dont have tonal languages.
The rest of asia i dont include as that would be again much bigger differences especially for West asia （which is the middle-eastern part of asia）….
Coming to ‘ppl pronouncing especially words from Tonal languages , ive seen a few others （mainly white youtubers , living in thailand and china） who were even better in speaking the language than some ppl who actually have thai/chinese roots… for some ppl learning any languages around the world dont seem to hard to learn （ if we talk about SPEAKING the language only ）
With the recent Black Wukong craze I was hoping you'd make a video about him or journey to the west or Sun Wukong or related myths hopefully you do I like this video too
Well he can speak Chinese fluently bro.
Oooh the guy with the Learn Chinese channel knows how to pronounce Chinese. Amazing. As an Asian, that's incredible.
My grandmother was born in the year of the dragon and when she passed away it started raining soon after doctors declared. I never realized why my dad said "the dragon has ascended to heaven" but after hearing this piece of knowledge, it kind of gives me peace. Thanks for sharing!!
Dude 😂
Gonna sound weird but exactly the same thing happened to my dad, I was on my way home from school and it started pouring down with rain for 5 mins I found out in that time period my dad passed. He was also yeas of the dragon
This is the Year of the Dragon 2024 🐉💚
Coincidence doesn't mean anything bruh, people just spew out nonsense to make themselves feel better these days smh.
Chinese mythology is no joke.
Technically, "fenghuang" is not a single entity: "feng" is the male and "huang" is the female of the species. Perhaps that was why the movie showed a pair of flaming flying birds?
Over time, it seems the word has been feminised to be paired with the masculine dragon...
My favourite is the "qilin" because the character "lin" is in my name. My mother supposedly dreamt of the creature before I was born, but unfortunately, I am definitely no sage or person of great virtue and wisdom! Just living life day to day as a nobody.
😂😂
A proverb once said "Better a son who know how to farm (doing his job) than a king/general who knows only to drink/dine (extravagans)"
Now, whic one is you? 😉😉😉😉😉
do not drink and dine for sure;
but do not know how to farm either!
just sitting in front of the laptop translating text when I manage to get jobs....
Same here brother just living life day to day
Thank you for your explanation of the fenghuang ❤️
“living life day to day as a nobody”, said this person … the day before unwittingly saving the world. 😅
The thing is, many people claim the Nine-Tailed Fox as Korean or Japanese, but factually and historically created in China Mythology. Note that Japanese and Korean culture all have roots derived from Chinese culture and myths. For example Koreans took the Chinese Zodiac Calendar and Lunar New Year and made it their "own". The Hanfu was also created by the Chinese, but stolen by the Koreans for their culture. They tried to name it hanbok to divert plagiarism from it.
koreans, believe they invented a clothing that was way before their time.
The universe was created by Koreans.🤣
宇宙起源，大韩民国。思密达。😂😂😂@@Ertrinken0147
Japs and Korean have no such deep culture but can steal it from China then cheated to the west. That is all.
Many ppl do not realized plagiarism is at the core of Korean values. It not a coincident that Samsung was sued by Apple over the smartphone designs and Apple won. They stole Jpop style and culture too. I think it’s sickening how plastic the society have become that they actually promote cosmetic tourism. I cannot imagine being a Korean. The pressure of society to look good that I go into a plastic surgery shop to ‘plagiarise’ another celebrity look. Very rotten society and kpoop just made it worst
I watch a lot of Chinese fantasy dramas (Xianxia) so I am already familiar with these mythical creatures. I like your explaining their true meaning. It helps me understand them better.
I was gonna say that, it helps me understand my daughters anime too. For all its entertainment, it sometimes doesn’t make sense to a western animation girl like me. ✌️
So…I read XianXia as in fresh prawns. And when I read C-dramas I heard Sea Dramas. If dragons are the controllers of weathers, does that mean the descendants of the dragons, including me can make people wet too?
I can make people wet too,😂
Is that why not we are 😊
nah no way dude.Those Xianxia sucks so much.Almost no Chinese like to watch those, they just mislead people how mythical creatures are and those studio who make the film only care about money.Those stories are all the same and so bad, the stories are like those weird story book like 17 years ago in China.💀
Dear Ben,
It's a real joy to see you back in the videos treating our culture with sincere respect. It really does mean the world to me. The fact is that anyone else would have delivered this material with a tone of superiority, disbelief, and derision. But you took pains to make sure that where jokes were included they weren't at our expense. The effort hasn't gone unnoticed. You're one of the free people I trust to present Chinese cultural Artifacts in a faithful and respectful way.
Thank you so much.
I’m a bit horrified you think the rest of the world is full of sneers and derision. We’re not. There’s a lot of admiration and respect
no he’s right, and i say this as a white person so maybe try to look beyond your own views (as someone who based on your response i assume is a white male) and notice how incredibly biased most westerners are when covering chinese topics, it’s really disappointing
@@uuuuuuuuiiiiiii was it the name? Not mine. And I studied Chinese and culture and am very aware of all the bullies and unfairness in the world. But when you distrust EVERYBODY and think every - or even most- white people are racist you end up seeing what you expect to see. And that helps no one , least of all you. And can make you hostile and off putting to people on your side. Which helps the indoctrination// racists but does no good. I’ve found being aware and wary but still expecting people to behave well and trying to behave well myself is a more useful approach. Some times peoples heads are full of preconceptions through lack of experience, knowledge and understanding
The earliest known dragon in China is actually from the Hong Shan Culture, back in Neolithic age, about 6 to 7 thousands years ago. During the excavations, archeologist discovered a dragon carved using black jade. Earliest known "phoenix" or sun bird was discovered in Shen Yang, Liao Ning Province, also from neolithic period about 8 thousand years ago. The sun birds were carved wooden totems, they were in a bundle of three; the city uses the sun bird as her emblem even today.
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon”
Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" .
“The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community.
the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.”
Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"?
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles".
Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
@@yanyanz3011 九尾狐 literally means Nine Tailed Fox. There is no Nine Tailed Fox in western mythology...
@@yanyanz3011 I agree, but its the western translation to things that are closest known to them so they have a better time understanding or grasping what these mythical animals are. If you attempt to enlighten someone by using ping yin, no body would understand.
Think about it, ask someone what a fenghuang is, or what JiuWeiHU is, no body would understand you, but if you tell them that its the chinese pheonix or nine tail all of a sudden the realize.
If you want foreign countries to realize and understand your culture better, its ok to use or compare with counterparts.
The Fenghuang (Phoenix) is not wreathed in fire, this is a common mixup with the European myth or the Chinese Zhuque (Vermillion Bird of the South). The Shanhaijing is one of the oldest known compendium, but draws from much older legends and accounts... human-headed snakes are probably among the most normal stuff in there :D
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 As a descendant of the Chinese culture, i approved all of the translations in the video, they are accurate translations that nicely depict the characteristics of the mythical animals. Dragons, phoenix, nine tailed fox are nice names in no way for anyone from any culture to be confused, way better then forcing meaningless Mandarin pronunciation on people of other cultures.
@@sryis meaningless pronunciation? So do you mean that sushi, kimchi, kimono, katana, Beijing, Tianjin, Tokyo are meaningless also? Of course, they're meaningless because people from other countries don't understand those vocabularies, do they?
@@sryis I think you have to say your opinion to japanese and Korean because they force their meaningless vocabularies to the foreigners.
@@yanyanz3011people from other cultures are probably not likely to want to learn word pronunciation from another language in order to properly pronounce the name of a creature that is similar to one in their own culture.
They’re much more likely to say “Chinese dragon”.
About the Feng Huang, they are actually a pair with Feng being the male and Huang being the female. Similarly, Qi Lin is a pair with Qi being the male and Lin being the female.
Over time people just got lazy and only drew one creature instead of a pair.
Also in ancient time, these creatures were reserved by royalties. Dragon for Emperor, Pheonix for Empress/Queen. Anyone else who used these creatures as symbols would have their heads off.
There is another creature similar to Qi Lin called Long Ma "Dragon Horse". Think of it as the ancient Chinese Pegasus as it was supposed to be a winged horse with a dragon's head.
And as a side note, your slide about the Feng Huang being king of birds "百鳥之王" had the wrong character. Your slide used 白 (the colour white) in stead of 百 (the unit 100) so it actually reads as "king of white birds".
Not quite with the dragon, that had to do with the number of toes the dragons portrayed had which had differences that ended up focusing in different areas.
FengHuang was, indeed, a pair in oldest Tales. But overtime, they got fused in one single being
I thought Long Ma was a specific character, the dragon that turned into a white horse who accompanies the heroes in Journey to the West. Is there more than one Long Ma?
@@malindakao7978 That is Bai Long Ma ("White Dragon Horse"). He was a specific fictional character in Journey to the West. He was literally a teen dragon who was transformed into a white horse. But the mythical Long Ma was its own kind of creature.
Feng is female , hua is male
My favorite part of Shangchi was the depictions of creatures from traditional chinese folklore. I wish we could have seen more of that, or like a spinoff that takes place primarily in that world.
This guy looks like David Tennant, sounds like David Tennant, and teaches Chinese language and culture. Instant subscribe.
Giraffe in Korean is 기린, pronounced kirin, basically the same as the Japanese name! It’s interesting to see connections between these three languages
So when will we return to the state of being a vassal state of China?☺️I like the time when China was the master of Asia and controlled the world trade.😎
Yeah they share a lot just like European languages, cuz they have been communicating for centuries
because you come from us🤣like a child leaving your mother house in many years ago
@@cottonbomb8272unlike European languages which are mostly in the same language group (Indo-European), these three languages belong to different language groups. Some say Japanese belongs to Altaic too but actually it only shares some wording patterns and not the grammar.
What we share is that we were all under the great influence of China and imported academic methods, some vocabularies and writing letters etc from them.
China was a big brother or let's say, a mother in terms of civilizing process for most of the Asian countries around.
thats why I used word "communicating". And about European languages, theres similar group divisions, like Germanic group(German/North4/English), Romance(French/Spanish/Italian etc), Slavic(EastEuro). Both Germanic and Slavic adopted so many Romance words too cuz the obvious Roman empire influnce, just like the ancient China. Now by the internet power we keep adopting words, Chinese use Byebye more than 再见 especially in eastern coast cities. And many morden tech words we are using are acutally comes from Japan
Qilin was featured prominently in opening sequence of the most recent Fantastic Beasts movie (harry potter series). Eddie Redmayne pronounced Qilin expertly! I was thoroughly impressed
I can't believe this channel still exists. I remember watching in middle school. Now I already graduated college 😅
Thanks for coming back. We had a break of five years too, but now we are back!
Man no body introduces Shan Hai Jing and those Chinese mythical creatures enough. I LOVE chinese mythical creatures! Nice to see your video! And yes I do believe in them :D
Loved the Shang Chi film including these mythical creatures, I hope we see more in future media. I would love to visit China one day to see the Great Wall and Forbidden City
His pronunciation is actually so good! Really impressive.
Your pronunciation of the names are amazingly accurate, so glad to have stumbled upon your channel =)
Thanks a lot. Even if I know already all these mythical animals ,it's a pleasure to listen to you and look at your videos.
Born and raised in China, I appreciate so much of this video!!! I didn’t expect to learn so much about these creatures through this video, but I did!!! Well done!! Thank you so much for sharing ❤❤❤
I admire the attention to detail in your videos. It's clear that you care about delivering high-quality content.
This is my first video of yours. You make this really fun while being informative :)
So funny and informative at the same time. 😂😂
The fox with nine tsles... I saw the drama "Ten miles of peach blossoms" so sweet!
Same!!! I heard 'Qing Qiu' and was like, 'I know that place'!!
samee
@@janwahcaban2022青丘和涂山是中国神话九尾狐的家乡。😊😊
"History became legend. Legend became myth.” Thanks! Please make a video about the 9-headed water serpent...
Gosh can i just say how happy i am to hear you pronouncing everything so properly and accurately, thank you for respecting my culture enough to say it properly
The Qilin story of appearing to benevolent ruler was also the core story of the most recent "Fantastic beasts" movie.
There is a Qilin in the story and it was "captured" to help the wizard world choose their new leader. The baddy of the film created a bad Qilin so that it will appear as the Qilin chose him, but the good guys came and used a real Qilin and it chose a better person.
“Dragons” were all the same to the ancients. East or West, dragons were associated with water; you can see that idea still persisting in sailors’ maps showing the boundaries of the seas filled with dragons. Where the waters and winds were seen as calm, the dragons were benevolent. Where the waters and winds were harsh, they were seen as harsh. The fire breathing worms of the west were slowly developed over time, beginning with ancient stories about fighting dragons (the ocean torrents), and continuing with Saint George, The Hobbit, etc.
事實上，「龍」是佛經中非常常見的眾生之一。龍是介於神與人之間的生命體。他們是一種神。中國和西藏的密宗佛教崇拜龍。他們除了能帶來雨水之外，還是財神。
Sea dragons are beautiful and rare creatures that only exist in a small area of coastline off of New Zealand.🤍
Chinese dragons are scaly and don't have wings. It can fly wingless unlike western dragons that is leathery looking.
Chinese Dragon: rulers of sea / water creatures.
Chinese Phoenix: ruler of the sky/birds
Kirin/Qilin: ruler of the land animals.
Edit: don't check the comments, it is a waste of your time .
Qilins are also associated with water and believed to be sub-type of Dragons. Shishi seams to be more accurate.
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 Yes. Those are analogies/translations. And they do have identical counterparts. It is just not clear as many common depictions were washed out by mass media.
Regard Feng Huang I agree. It is more just fancy bird. Suzaku is actually closer to Phoenix/Raróg. In European mythologies there is dozen types of Dragons including Sea Serpens and Zmey. Nicors arguably are closes to fox spirits then Qilin. But there is also something known as Hippocampus.
I'm not entirely sure what point you are making? You are aware of Silk Road?
@@TheRezro it's not identical, but similar. You can say that marsupial dog is similar to common dog, but they are not identical, they are just similar, it's called convergent evolution. Same here in the mythological creatures.
And one more, do not use japanese word for referring to Chinese stuff, it's called Zhuque, not Suzaku. Of course I know that Suzaku is the japanese pronunciation for Zhuque these Hanzi, but this thing is originated from China, you have to use Chinese pronunciation. I wonder why you people are happily to use Japanese or Korean pronunciation to mention their proper nouns, meanwhile you use English or other languages pronunciation to mention Chinese stuffs.
@@yanyanz3011 the nine tailed fox is just translation of jiuweihu. Other than that, you are correct.
By dragon: we often refer to Chinese/eastern dragons.
Just discovered this channel, you guys seem super fun!!!
The nine-tailed fox in Japanese is known as a Kitsune.
Chinese mythology also has the Longma which is often depicted as a draconic unicorn with wings, sort of like a dragon pegasus if you will but with bat-like wings.
came from somewhere else as most japanese cultures are. it gets heavily influenced from every other culture. you can even see it in their current society. The Japanese is good at take from somewhere, focus on it and enhance it.
@@Herryjevery true
both longma and kitsune are names that blox fruits ( a game in roblox ) has taken from chinese mythology I suppose.
sadly i want said to you that japanese called kitsune are inspired or taken from china mythology just like goku or kiki father are inspired from china journey to the west sun wukong & niu mo wang
This was so cool to hear about all the history too going into it! Really excellent video. It's great to see Ben again too, I remember him from way back in Off the Great Wall days haha
My respect to you for pronouncing each chinese word correctly.
Thanks for this video! I'm so glad you didn't leave out the pronunciations. 😂 Some of my favorite Chinese coins have dragons or dragons and phoenixes on them. Qi lins are great, too (that also appears in the collection).
I found a really good book on dragons titled Dragon in China and Japan, by Visser (pub. 1954). He throws in a bit about India a well. Lots of interesting lore in that little book.
The creator of Japanese mythology is ancient Chinese. They miss China very much. But they cannot return to China. Therefore, they use a large number of Chinese literature and book borrowings brought by China.. Adapted and created (Only these Chinese elites can understand the content).Become a new myth (modern is called Japanese myth). The characters and stories in their myths are from ancient China (including styling and clothing).
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon”
Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" .
“The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community.
the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.”
Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"?
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles".
Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
To add to your Daji bit, the king wasn't corrupted by Daji. He was always an evil douche-canoe, so much that Nuwa, a goddess, tasked Daji with bringing down the entire dynasty. Daji didn't just wake up one morning and think, "You know, I think I'm going to be the king's concubine and feed him human flesh. That'd be fun."
Daji went about the whole "revoking the mandate of heaven" thing by driving the king into greater and greater corruption until his own people rebelled. Nuwa was eventually so disgusted with Daji's actions that she raised up a shaman to kill Daji. But the whole thing started because Nuwa ordered it anyway. There are no heroes in that story.
She killed Daji even tho she's the one who gave order to Daji 😅😅
Brother, as a Chinese, I want to correct this. The relationship between Daji and Nuwa comes from the Romance of the Gods and does not exist in orthodox mythology.
Nüwa was also the goddess who created human species supposedly by using mud/clay(so, the ancient day clay artist).
And yah the Nüwa and Daji relationship is a new thing, the old stories doesn't have such a link because the fox Daji is not a goddess but instead a spirit kind called 妖精Yao Jing, Yao Jing are things(plants/trees/animals or sometimes even nonliving items) that by rare chance grew to have human-like but also beyond human intelligent, they can grow to have a human feature while keeping their original form after years of self training and only lives on Earth, basically immortal that only dies if being killed by god/goddess/other Yao Jing. They too like humans can become a god/goddess over long time if they're good and hardworking with merits but Daji was not that. A god/goddess and Yao Jing would never become friends because they belong to a different world, god/goddess lives in a different world on the sky with different time flow and stuffs, they don't come down often apart from missions.
Also apparently Daji is an actual human who did became a concubine of 商纣王, but according to some history records she's a kind hearted human and had not much to do with the downfall of the dynasty(it's been going downhill for a while anyways), her being a cunning fox seducing people and ending the whole Shang dynasty was a thing that's made up by dynasties after Shang because women hating is a thing and 红颜祸水(basically saying pretty women ruins everything) is a very much popular phrase.
Daji is a real person.She's not a God.Why is she a fox with nine tails?Because she's from the Yusu tribe.The totem of the Yousu tribe is the nine-tailed fox.At the same time, Daji is also the sister of my ancestors.My ancestors were the last of the Yusu tribe.My ancestor was the last patriarch of the Yousu tribe, who founded the State of Su.Later, his descendants and clansmen were all surnamed Su.Su has a population of more than eight million worldwide.
Love your explanation, your source, your clear voice and your word choices are fantastic🎉🎉
Thank you, their mythology is amazing.
A great explanation about these famous Chinese mythological creatures, btw, 这么多年后，Ben仍然十分帅气❤
If a lot of you recognize them from animes or kdrama, this is where it all came from.
Japanese and koreans are not great at citing sources when it comes to their cultural exports.😅
The Chinese Identity in Question: “Descendants of the Dragon”
Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon" .
“The Descendants of the Dragon”: A Symbolic Han Blood Community.
the holistic symbol of the Chinese is linked with the "dragon totem" and “dragon culture.”
Why do Chinese call themselves "Descendants of the Dragon"?
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Confucianism began to be religious, and the idea of Taoism becoming immortal gradually became stronger. The dragon pattern began to appear as the image of the Four Spiritual Gods, which is the image of the blue dragon in the "Qinglong, Baihu (White Tiger), Zhuque (Suzaku), Xuanwu" that we call today. Thin tail. The power of the great Chinese empire during this period was particularly vividly displayed in the "Qin Bricks and Han Tiles".
Only the places where the ancient Chinese arrived and occupied. Chinese culture naturally appeared in these places. "Dragon" represents the power of the emperor of China in these places.
Oh yeah, they just culturally plagiarized and then misbranded everything as “Japanese” or “Korean”. Worse, they come around looking down on Chinese culture and trash Chinese culture while elevating their misbranded “Japanese” and “Korean” cultures. Koreans even claim that Confucius was “Korean”, and that Koreans invented the Oracle Bones Script. Just utterly ridiculous with their way to usurp supremacy over China from where their cultures came from. Reminds me of fallen angels blaspheming God while pretending they are gods, usurping the place of God.
@@barbiebarbie1813 Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@barbiebarbie1813 and please DO NOT USE JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION FOR THE CHINESE THINGS, it's just called Qinglong, Baihu, Zhuque, Xuanwu. Remember that my friend.
If you say what you say, foreigners do n’t understand. Others do n’t understand. It ’s meaningless.
The Japanese and Koreans use foreigners to do not understand Chinese characters to fabricate history and culture.@@yanyanz3011
As a Persian, the Persian word for lion is Shir
Ser is probably the telephone effect
I really enjoying your video! Your pronunciation are amazingly accurate. I like the way your explaining their true meaning. It helps me understand them better.
U guys i know for sure that dragons exist. There is a big heart shape pond in myanmar which my tribe also had a history about that pond.. Army camp nearby used to spot a snake like creature which had like a sort of horn.. therefore in our language we call it "A snake that have horn". they use to shoot the cresture when they spot it, out of fear of course.. but any person that.shot the creature suffer from an unknown disease like high fever etc etc... i do believe that that creature is the last kind of dragon.
I love listening mythical stories and creatures.. ❤❤❤❤ thanks
The phoenix is 「百鳥之王」 not 「白鳥之王」. The latter means the King of white birds
Good eye 👁
Happens to the best 😂
U learn Chinese for200 year dude!
In addition, Fenghuang(phoenix) is actually a pair of birds. Feng is the male one and Huang is the female one. And we have this classical theme song call Feng Qiu Huang, Qiu means persuing here.
Great content! Learned a lot. There's something you can improve, you pronounce Qin dynasty like Qing dynasty, which can be confusing sometimes.
You got a like from me because you mentioned my favorite Pokémon ! Actually a lot of Pokémon are based on Chinese myths not just Ninetales. Ho Oh is based the Chinese Phoenix. Infernape is based on Sun Wu Kong the Monkey King.
Therian formes, tepig evo line, magikarp evo line etc.
The treasures of ruin are based on the 4 perils
Also Qu Lin which is in Japanese is Kirin featured in Naruto, Sasuke technique
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@yanyanz3011 九尾狐 literally means "nine+ tail + fox" what are you talking about? And do you have any idea how many cultures have a distinct mythical creature with only vaguely similar characteristics to others, that we as a society have all _collectively_ classified as 'dragons'?
It's not that no one wants to learn, but you start with a familiar base. You start going into detail once people can actually understand what you're referring to. Especially when we're talking about, you know, fictional creatures we can only describe from historical anecdotes and artist depictions?
one thing i learned a long time ago when i started getting into folk lore and Myths and legends, is that all these story's had a factual beginning that simply became more fantastic in the telling of their stories.
This video popped up as a suggestion from TH-cam. I loved watching it! I find mythological creatures really fascinating, and I love the sound of Chinese words such as the names of these creatures. I’m curious about the movie.
By the way, our cat is named Kurama after the nine-tailed fox as it appears in some Japanese anime. The story of foxes appearing as beautiful women to lure men to their deaths is prevalent in Japan, too.
I am ethnic Chinese, and this is still good education.
The Dragon was the most interesting to me simply because of the skeleton found but I'm also fond of the Phoenix.
龙生有九子，九子不成龙，各有所好。比喻同胞兄弟品质、爱好各不相同。在中国的传统文化中，九表示极多。有一种说法说，这里并非指龙生了九子，而是泛指一个虚数。
主流版本中龙的九子是囚牛、睚眦、嘲风、蒲牢、狻猊、赑屃、狴犴、负屃、螭吻。
1.长子囚牛，喜音乐，蹲立于琴头；
2.次子睚眦(yá zì)，嗜杀喜斗，刻镂于刀环、剑柄吞口，心胸狭隘；
3.三子嘲风，形似兽，是老三，平生好险又好望，殿台角上的走兽是它的遗像。也有人一直认为它是有着龙脉的凤。
4.四子蒲牢，受击就大声吼叫，充作洪钟提梁的兽钮，助其鸣声远扬；
5.五子狻猊（suān ní），形似狮子，排行第五，平生喜静不喜动，好坐，又喜欢烟火，因此佛座上和香炉上的脚部装饰就是它的形象。
6.六子霸下（也有另一种名字，方框内的看成一个字，[虫八][虫夏]），又名赑屃（bì xì），似龟有齿，喜欢负重，是碑下龟；
7.七子狴犴(bì àn)，形似虎好讼，狱门或官衙正堂两侧有其像；
8.八子负屃 [6] （fù xì），身似龙，雅好斯文，盘绕在石碑头顶；
9.九子螭吻（chī wěn），又名鸱尾或鸱(chī)吻，口润嗓粗而好吞，遂成殿脊两端的吞脊兽，取其灭火消灾。
Disclaimer: I am not a historian nor am I Chinese (I am half Japanese half Korean). The following comment is my personal opinion and idea. If you are Chinese and you are knowledgeable about Chinese myth, please correct any mistakes I make.
One thing I personally find really interesting is how you can compare the Fènghuáng and Lóng with the Yīn and Yáng symbol. Both the Fènghuáng and Yīn are correlated with femininity, while the Lóng and Yáng are attributed to masculinity. However what I also find interesting is how Yīn and Yáng are also associated with the moon and sun respectively. The Fènghuáng, as stated in the video, is a mythical bird that came from / uses the power of the sun. But according to the Yīn and Yáng, the sun is considered a masculine symbol. This could potentially be explained by the fact that Fènghuáng used to be both male and female, with the males being called the “Fèng” and females being called the “Huáng”. However once the bird became paired with the dragon as it’s opposite entity, “Fèng” and “Huáng” were combined in order to become a single female entity, the Fènghuáng. If you look back to the various meanings of Yīn and Yáng, you’ll notice that both symbols represent the sexual reproductive aspects of female and male. While that concept in and of itself makes sense, what I find interesting is that Yīn symbolizes *both* reproductive parts while Yáng is solely masculine. This could be a potential point of interest that can connect Yīn’s correlation with the Fènghuáng.
The one thing that stumps me is the celestial body symbolism. Normally, the Fènghuáng represents fire, whilst the Lóng represents water (notice how the Lóng is inspired by aquatic / semi-aquatic animals). And yet, the moon, which is associated with water in many cultures given it’s predominant effect in the ocean’s tides, and the sun which is, well, the sun, fire… I think for this aspect, I think it’s more so the figurative interpretation rather than literal. The sun represents energy. Power. The Chinese dragon is always associated with the emperor of China. Absolute power. The moon is smaller than the sun and it’s light much more gentle. The moon represents femininity. You can say that the Fènghuáng is gentle like water and the Lóng is fierce like fire, which juxtaposes the elemental power that they are associated with having. The Chinese idea of “combining” aspects of “two opposites” is endlessly fascinating to me. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve been inspired to write a story regarding the themes. I am an aspiring writer and animator. I’m not a good writer and I’ve yet to learn how to draw well, but stories and art are my passions in life, and there are so many ideas I wish to bring to life.
My idea inspired by Chinese myth revolves around a Phoenix and a Dragon, disguised as humans in modern 21st century China. As immortals, they have witnessed the birth of China as a nation and are keenly aware of every single aspect of the country’s history. They’ve also learned to adapt to modern life and technology and integrate into the modern culture. It’s the kind of story that introduces very historic and archaic ideas, remixed to fit and adapt into a modern setting. My current idea for the character designs is to have the Fènghuáng be pretty tough and cool-looking in the outside but has a gentle and caring personality. She’ll have a mature appearance but her eyes with white pupils emanate a very soft, almost child-like look that sees the world like a soft-flowing river. The dragon character however has the outward appearance of a child, but stare too deeply into his black eyes and you’ll catch a glimpse of the ferocious and wild beast that’s been tamed inside of the body.
I hope I can improve my knowledge and writing skills so that I’m able to tap into the rich and enchanting Chinese culture and mythology. It’s the kind of thing that I don’t want to make any mistakes when depicting, using artistic license in order to enhance already-existing ideas as apposed to deleting and replacing them. I firmly believe that people need to respect and learn from history without letting it strictly control our lives. Both the ideas of the past and ideas of the future matter. Yīn and Yáng, eh?~
i agree
Sometimes 阴yin refers to the genitalia, which is usually combined with another Chinese character "部" (部 is an abstract concept, usually described as a part of the whole, and in most cases has a clear subordinate relationship) to form the "阴部 ". My personal understanding is that Yang may also refer to the “surface”, while Yin refers to the “hidden”,yang is something we can clearly observe, while yin is often something we cannot easily see. Therefore,to a people,in daily life, places that cannot be openly displayed to everyone are called the "阴部hidden part", which is the genitalia. Of course, this is my personal understanding of modern Chinese, and I am not sure if it was the case in ancient times.
Supplementary notes:
“yang is something we can clearly observe, while yin is often something we cannot easily see”It's for “the one thing”,It's like... It's like sunny! We often easily notice sunlight on a sunny day, so sunlight is Yang, but at the same time as sunlight comes, shadows appear with it, so shadows are Yin.
For Two Related but Different things, if we select one as a benchmark firstly and say that one is Yang, then the other one can be called Yin.Such as In COVID-19 testing, the test results "infected with the virus" are referred to as yang, and "uninfected with the virus" are referred to as yin. These two are of the same level in terms of results, with only infected or uninfected, but they still have a distinction between yin and yang.
Any tips for your work, I have some personal thoughts. According to the Yin Yang fish, While Yin and Yang do not invade each other, there is Yin in Yang and Yang in Yin,so “Yin and Yang” is a balanced idea.Perhaps this can provide some ideas for the interaction between the two protagonists,like someone's contrast,or they sometimes imitating the other one's style of behavior,etc.
The story may not be very novel for Chinese people, but I believe that this genre may not have been widely disseminated internationally yet. At least with your excellent personal knowledge, you can still give it a try. Many manga or novel works that are famous for some culture often have authors who only know the surface of the culture they are based on, and the culture as the theme is just a gimmick, but you are obviously different. You know its core,you know how it works.In fact, your understanding of this part of Chinese culture far exceeds that of many non Chinese people(even some Chinese people). Believe in yourself, I wish you success soon.🥰🥰🥰Good luck.
@@Hacksilber I suppose the base idea doesn’t sound very novel since the details are pretty barebones. I haven’t thought of much else besides the shape of the skeleton of the idea, so it’s up to me to flesh it out to make it more interesting. Thank you, thank you very much for your words. I’m still learning more about Chinese culture and myth every day, discovering ideas and recontextualizing things I already knew to gain a deeper understanding. I believe China’s history to be a very rich and powerful aspect of humanity.
I’d also like to thank you for your added input of knowledge. I appreciate it and I will make sure to keep your comments saved for future reference!
The recent video game Palia borrows a lot of Chinese mythology to create their own... dragon and Phoenix have their own shrines and aesthetic, and the nine-tailed fox was adapted to an adorable creature called a kitsuu with antlers and 2 tails.
Thanks for the informative video. What a wonderful imagination and culture.
Really cool video. Super informative and enjoyable
I watch a lot of chinese movies/shows and i love the look of chinese dragons. Other countries version of a dragaon cant hold a candles to chinese dragons.
@@chingvang9320 yup
As a Chinese, I find your speech very interesting and your pronunciation is good
Awesome! I'm currently writing about relations between Ancient and Medieval Somalia and China, and this video will certainly help as a guiding reference! Great job!
This is interesting would you hook me up when you finish it ? I would love to read it
@@Kineceleren Do you have an email or mobile number?
New to the channel. Currently learning Mandarin (partially studying Cantonese) and Japanese! Remember the "Shang Chi" movie, 😮😮😮😮😮! Saw the the mythical beasts, had no knowlede about them...until I saw segment! Xie xie!
I love Mythology and especially Journey to the West and Wukong stuffs. I like the martial art stuff in Shang Chi, but my favorite is all the lore and mythological world building, it feels grand and magical as Thor on Asgard.
I love reading wuxia novels, and I read about these mythical creatures all the time. It's nice to see a proper visualisation rather than what I just imagined they looked like
Kirin appears in the Monster Hunter series as an elder dragon that resembles a unicorn that can summon lightning along with some of the other creatures.
A lot of Japanese mythology borrows from Chinese mythology. You'll see a lot of similarities between them.
Japanese mythology and ancient literature. Many of them are re -content of ancient Chinese literature books. It was created and re -prepared by ancient Chinese people who moved to Japan 東瀛 / 倭 in ancient times.
They were written with a lot of reference to ancient Chinese books and historical content. And all of them were written by ancient Chinese文言文 (pronounced in Chinese dialect).
So the content of Japanese mythology is similar to Chinese classics and mythology. Including gods and monsters.
For more than 2,000 years, some ancient Chinese nobles escape to Japan 東瀛 / 倭 because of the war. After that, a large number of Chinese elites were sent to Japan by the Emperor of the Chinese Tang Dynasty.
These Chinese in Japan東瀛 / 倭. They are elites responsible for establishing the Chinese regime.
* At that time. Ancient Japanese region was one of the ancient Chinese cities (especially before the 13th century). It was called "東瀛 / 倭".
In addition to the "Chinese regime area" established by the Chinese. At that time, there were more than 100 other indigenous countries on the island (the ancestors of the Japanese today).
*Modern Japanese have about 5-10%of ancient Chinese blood.
To understand the origin of Korea and Vietnam’s fake history, we must start with the Japanese creating fake history after World War II to promote global success models (now Korea and Vietnam also use the belief technique).
No such thing as "borrowing". You can't return culture once you steal it. It's stolen.
Great video dude!this was very interesting.
PLEASE MAKE VIDEOS OF ANCIENT CHINESE GODS & MYTHICAL STORIES PLEASE !!! I know there’s a butch of them but it’ll give you lots of content 😁😁
Awesome time spent watching this video
You'd be amazed how much of myth is actually real. Most of myth is just being used to keep the true historical truth in the occult, but there have been many archeological excavations as well as finds that have been DNA tested. Sometimes what appears to be rock might be a part of a heart, lung or other tissue that was fossilized. A process that takes a lot shorter then is preclaimed, because there have been modern materials fossilized as well like car engines for example.
Always wondered if these are mythical, how did the first humans came up with it? Wouldn’t the other people around them call them out for being liars? I think there is a bigger probability that these creatures existed at some point in time, then faded from views. Over time, they became myths and legends.
This was so insightful!
Bro literally knew I was waiting for the dragon😂
Mujamassda Muhammad trey
Well researched and clearly presented
Hi Ben, thank you for sharing this insightful video. As a believer of other faith, I became quite confused when suddenly I began to draw spontaneous detailed drawings of different gods & goddesses or deities, mystical and celestial beings with scriptures. Since then, this has became a big WHY and I I have been searching for info which could help me to understand what they are, their origin and why are they appearing in my artworks. Some of the creatures you mentioned has been appearing in my artworks such as dragons, phoenix, zhilin & the lion. I hope to be able to find more info which could help me to have a deeper understanding or at least relate to the hidden meanings in the artworks.
I love the Chinese pronunciations. I love Chinese culture.
Good explanation. Feng Huang does not burst into flame, or light on fire. Feng Huang is commonly mistaken as Phoenix where it burst into flame.
Source?
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
@@catmatism Actual Chinese history. The Feng Huang is not in any way a phoenix. The word is a translation based upon the West's understanding.
@@catmatism 陈梦雷古今图书集。 You can try to read that, it is a compiled chronicles written between 1600 - 1700.
@@catmatismThe creature that burst into flame in chinese mythology is the red vermilion bird
Ohhh thanks, thanks for that.. good week.
Weird snake with a human head? I’ve seen enough Yokai to not be surprised. China really is Japan’s ancestor. 😂
Phoenix is my favourite. Definitely watching this again as I have really enjoyed it
Space nerd here!
The man with the snake/dragon body at 1:29 is called Gonggong. A dwarf planet is named after this creature in 2007.
Wow. Thanks for sharing :)
I looked it up and its satellite is called “Xiangliu”. It’s pretty much the same creature but with 9 heads😂
This is very informative video learn something new every day
Ummm loved it, as a Chinese I didn’t even know about all these, ummm one small mistake at the Phoenix part, it’s 百鸟之王 not 白鸟之王。 百is hundred， 白 is white。 😊
I literally watched Shang Chi last night and got this as a recommended video, nice!
The Chinese nine-tailed fox 九尾狐- Original version
Japanese Kitsune ?? -
The so -called "Japanese mythology". It is the content adapted from the Chinese in ancient Japan (the Chinese palace has been occupied by the Japanese indigenous people. The local Chinese cannot return to mainland China). The local Chinese referred to a large number of Chinese mythology books. Only the ancient Chinese talents who have received higher education understand the ancient classical Chinese.
Korean Gumiho ?? -
No Korean myth in real history. Modern Koreans directly copied Chinese myths. The fake Korean history and fake culture they have been creating.
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
You can use japanese and Korean pronunciation for that thing, but you use English for Chinese creatures? What a ridiculous joke? Why can't you just write Jiuweihu?
@@yanyanz3011 English is for everyone to understand.
"Chinese characters sound 大陸漢字併音" can only be understood by mainland Chinese people. So why don't you use Chinese characters directly?
@@barbiebarbie1813 yeah of course, the Japanese and Korean pronunciation can only be understood by Japanese and korean, so don't use the term sushi, kimchi, karate, ginseng, tsunami, use Japanese and Korean character instead.
And one more, Chinese writing system is called Hanzi not Chinese character.
@@yanyanz3011 I talk to foreigners. Don't you understand? This is TH-cam.
Well presented program to learn Chinese in Entertaining way
I really enjoyed this video! Would it be possible to look at the history of the monkey king tales?
I’m off to watch the rest of your Chinese history videos!
Soon…
thx mate, i like it very much. best wishes
My favorite was the qilin. I would have liked to have seen more on it.
Fascinating, I learned so much. I thought maybe some scary looking Dino bones were discovered in the area thousands of years ago and that was the inspiration for the legends of dragons.
I would love to be relaxing down at the beach and just see them flying overhead. Benevolent ones of course.
The lion-like creature is also depicted as idols and carved in stones in the southern part of India. The are depicted outside temples and on pillars. We call it Yali.
中文的发音好标准，颠覆我的刻板印象了，视频也很棒
那个无头人拿着斧子，叫共工。撞倒不周山，也是一个很精彩的故事。
A young , handsome green goblin is explaining me Chinese cultural myth with perfect pronounciation. Im loving it!
The dijiang did seem weird to me at first, then I remembered biblically accurate angels!
be not afraid!
Respect as a Chinese from Singapore
just so I'd add something, Qilin i think were said to be incredibly benevolent thus it will float above grass in order not to damage it
So that is why god Baijue had qi lin as his spirit beast in ancient love poetry ❤️
I’ve lived in Asia almost 50 years and speak fluent Chinese. I honestly believe there were these creatures in the past-they really existed. However, the palate of the rich Chinese craves the exotic! So these wonderful creatures were eaten out of existence.
I don't think you can call the Qi Lin a Chinese unicorn. There is not an equivalent in Greek or other western cultures. It will be like saying the unicorn is the Greek Qi Lin. Doesn't make sense.
Just call it Qi Lin.
Loong is not dragon,
Fenghuang is not Phoenix,
Qilin is not unicorn,
And it's called jiuweihu, not nine tailed fox.
Chinese mythological creatures have no identical counterparts in Western mythology.
So, do not use those wrong translation because it will make people confused.
It's same for other things my friend. We have to use the correct translation for Chinese things.
@@yanyanz3011 jiuweihu=nine tailed fox is ok,不会有太多的歧义，但是独角兽和麒麟完全就是两个东西，dragon和loong的性质就很不一样，完全就是两个东西，前者就是个很坏的大蜥蜴，后者比较复杂附带了很多含义。
Its interesting that Nine tails foxes are more commonly associated with Japan. As they were transfered into Shinto beliefs as they are familiars of goddess inari.
Same with many folk tales. When in reality originated in China.
Because japan have soft power while china lack it. China reputation is also bad because western media always portray chinese government as evil.(it may be true or maybe not, i dont know i'm not mainland chinese)
哇 你们对中国历史的整理非常系统且正确，连我一个中国人听了都觉得受益匪浅，把我从小累积的许多杂乱知识都梳理整齐了，great job！
Let me see if there are any Koreans in the comments saying these are theirs